January 2013

Visits to the cardiology clinic, in my opinion, never get easier. The crux of the matter is that we’re talking about an event that no one can predict: open heart surgery. Unless you or a loved one have gone through it, you simply cannot feel the weight, the gravity of it.

Yesterday, I was going to go to the doctor for a general checkup. I have a busted blood vessel in my eye, which the optomotrist discovered during an eye exam. The blood leaking into my eye is not a cause for concern, in and of itself. The eye absorbs the blood back into my body, I am told, and it doesn’t do any damage to the eye itself. The cause of the leak, on the other hand, might be of concern. The doctor said that no one is really certain why this happens, but he suggested that I have a checkup, just to be on the safe side.

We are strange creatures, of that there is no doubt. We spend our entire lives speeding toward death, yet we refuse to give it any but the meagerest of attention. We find so many ways to ignore it; yet, in the end, ignored or not, acknowledged or not, we must embrace it.